click as Daly spoke.
The last emotion brought a change to her that was quite enticing. Her nearly black eyes would warm, almost glitter with the excitement of making the connection while her full lips formed a welcoming smile that brought out a hint of dimple on her right cheek.
When she finally looked up from the notes, a furrow marred the line of her brow. She narrowed her eyes and considered the boards. She plucked the marker from his hand. At the first bulletin board, she wrote as she said, “Three of the four victims had agents.”
She moved briskly as she added notes to their profiles, but paused as she got to victim number four. She tapped the board with the marker. “This vic lost his agent because he was getting jobs on the side. The agent got pissed he wasn’t getting his share.” She wrote down the name of the former agent.
Miguel said, “What if all of them were getting gigs on the side?”
That hint of satisfaction slowly blossomed, softening and brightening her features. “Where do you go to find an acting job?”
“The previous team who worked this case—”
“Forget them. They got this far and hit a stone wall,” Helene jumped in, annoyance obvious in her voice.
He normally wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss what other FBI agents had done. After all, they were professionals and their ideas should not easily be disregarded. But she was right when she said they had hit a wall, and even ADIC Hernandez thought they’d been off in their profile.
So he did as she asked and suggested places where the four victims may have gotten leads on possible openings. “Newspapers, the Internet, Craigslist. Word of mouth.” He shrugged.
“How about we start with the Internet and Craigslist?” she said, and quickly dashed off some notes on each of the bulletin boards before stepping back and reading them off.
With one hand at her hip again, she ticked off the facts in the air with the marker. Then they reviewed the information their tech people had gotten from all the hard drives and computers collected from the victims’ homes. An easy-going vibe zapped between them as they riffled through the notes or stood at the bulletin board. At one point they both went for the marker at the same time, and bumped into each other.
The accidental contact sent a jolt of awareness through him. Apparently she felt it, too. They both quickly shifted to opposite sides of the table, almost as if it could create a barrier to the connection growing between them.
He grabbed his notes on that victim and flipped through them. “No computer. And his cell service plan didn’t include a data plan.”
“So it would be totally out of character for vic number four to go online for information. If we assume the serial killer hasn’t altered his MO—”
“Because it would be unusual for him to do that so early in the game,” Miguel agreed, and walked to the bulletin boards. “The cause of death on all of them is still the same—strangulation. All were tortured and posed. Dump sites are all very similar, as is the time of death and timing between the murders.”
Helene nodded, approached the boards, and put an X through the word “computer” on three of the four boards. “So the COD, TOD, and everything else means the killer hasn’t deviated from his plan. So we can infer—”
“That the information about the jobs did not come via a computer. So the newspaper or word of mouth is the most likely source.”
A smile came to her face, but it was bracketed by lines of worry. “It’ll be harder to make the connection between the unsub and such old-fashioned sources. I just hope we’re not too late to stop the next one.”
Miguel looked at the dates of the murders. Each of the killings had occurred roughly two weeks apart. And each of the victims had been tortured for a day or more before being strangled, dumped, and posed.
Which meant that their killer had likely already taken his next victim.
“Damn. We’ve only